Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms

Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction or metabolism. This controversy is problematic because some cellular organisms are also incapable of independent survival (but not of independent metabolism and procreation) and live as obligatory intracellular parasites. Although viruses have a few enzymes and molecules characteristic of living organisms, they have no metabolism of their own and cannot synthesize and organize the organic compounds that form them. Naturally, this rules out autonomous reproduction and they can only be passively replicated by the machinery of the host cell. In this sense they are similar to inanimate matter. While viruses sustain no independent metabolism, and thus are usually not accounted organisms, they do have their own genes and they do evolve by similar mechanisms by which organisms evolve.



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